This song is amazing, and pretty well describes my experience with the homeless in San Francisco.
San Francisco is the second-most densely populated city in the United States, with about 17,000 people per square mile; there are literally homeless people on every corner.
When a person asks if I can spare change, I avoid eye contact and say “Sorry dude.” Or simply “no” in the rarer case that it’s a woman asking for money.
Author Derek Powazek wrote an excellent collection called san francisco stories.
In his short “stories from the park 5.3.2002″, Powazek writes about his friend who bought a homeless, alcoholic veteran a $100 bus ticket after he says he’s hit rock bottom.
From the short:
Rari bought Jesse a bus ticket. A hundred dollars, one way to his sister’s town in Texas. He put him on Muni to the train station and said goodbye. “You’ve saved my life,” Jesse said.
Rari’s not a hero. He’s not a saint. He has that same thick layer of avoidance around him that we all have. But for one moment, he saw an opportunity to help someone, and he took a leap of faith, reached out from beyond his layer of self-protection, and made a difference.
Of course, the next day, Jesse was back in the park with a hundred dollars in his pocket. It’s not hard to sell a ticket at the station, after all. And think of all the booze a hundred bucks can buy.
It’s not that I don’t want to help people. It’s just that it’s very, very difficult to help a homeless person and not abet them.